The Letter
by udderpd
Summary: A Gringotts letter made it through Dumbledore's owl redirect.


**Disclaimer:** The whole empire that is Harry Potter belongs to her of the magic quill, namely J. K. Rowling; god bless her and all who sail in her. (There is something not quite right with that but for the life of me I cannot see what it is.)

**Authors Note;** This tale will treat cannon as something purely advisory which may be ignored as is necessary . . . so don't believe anything I have written.

**The Letter**

**by UdderPD**

It is very nearly the end of Harry's fifth year; seven days after their trip to the Department of Mysteries and it is about three o'clock on Thursday afternoon.

At lunch a few days earlier, in response to numerous enquiries, the Headmaster had grudgingly parted with as little information as he thought he could get away with. He had told the students that Harry Potter had received some relatively distressing news and he had probably hidden himself away somewhere to contemplate it; this had placated most of them.

Being placated did not include Harry's bushy haired best friend . . . Dumbledore had told them nothing; she didn't know that the Headmaster didn't actually have a clue as to where Harry had disappeared to.

"Where have you been? Nobody has seen you for nearly a week and I have been looking for you for days." Hermione had finally cornered Harry on the seventh floor and was dragging him into the room of requirements.

The room was set up like a small, comfortable study with two squishy arm chairs and a large coffee table, all in front of a huge fireplace, there were two closed doors in the wall opposite the large, friendly fire.

"What have you been up to, Harry?"

Looking up from where he had ensconced himself in one of the chairs, Harry said, "If I am going to give you anything like a complete answer to that question you must first promise to answer my question honestly."

She thought for a moment and looking him in his eyes said, "I promise."

Keeping the connection between their eyes, he said, "I love you Hermione Granger, more than anything else on the planet, I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I need to know if you have any similar thoughts to mine?"

Although she looked somewhat surprised she didn't look away as she quietly said, "I love you as well Harry Potter and I think that the rest of my thoughts are probably very similar to yours."

Both of them had huge smiles as she moved over and after sitting on his lap, kissed him . . . very seriously . . . several times; they both felt . . . complete.

"So what have you been up to?"

"Until you know that the time is right, would you promise not to talk about anything new I tell you?"

There was no hesitation, "I promise."

"It is a fairly long story so get comfortable." She simply snuggled closer to him.

He told her what happened to him at the end of the battle in the Ministry, he told her what had happened in the Headmaster's office including the Prophecy and everything else that happened afterwards, including his destroying the office. Quite understandably she was not at all happy with their Headmaster because of all of the fairly essential information that had previously been deliberately withheld from him . . . well them really.

He continued, "When I left the Headmasters office that evening you can well imagine that I was not very happy with him or the world in general, come to that; so early the next morning when I received a letter from Gringotts including a portkey I was very happy to use it to get away. The letter had told me that I was Lord Potter and the head of more than one Ancient and Noble family, of course this didn't mean a great deal to me but I figured that I should definitely find out what it meant.

"So first I went to check on you in the hospital wing and if you had been awake I would of told you about the letter and what it said before I used the portkey. As it happens that would likely of been a mistake because, at least, Ron would of been there and at the moment, the fewer people who know about this the better.

"Also, currently there are reasons not to completely trust the Weasleys.

"The Portkey letter took me to a comfortable waiting room in Gringotts and Griphook a Goblin I had met previously came in within a few seconds; he told that they knew when my portkey had been activated. Griphook took me to talk to Ragnok, the manager of the London branch of the bank and the current leader of the Goblin Nation. He suggested that before anything else happened, goblin medical personnel should check me over because they didn't trust some of the adult wizards who seemed to be taking far too much, unwarranted, interest in my life.

"I figured that being as how I didn't trust most of them either it wouldn't hurt and it seems that their mistrust was well justified because each piece of my clothing had a tracking charm on it. Next they found two bindings on my magic as well as evidence that I had overcome at least one on my own. Also they found and removed five memory charms . . . from what their removal has revealed to me you will probably have at least two memory charms.

"Apparently and Dumbledore is well aware of this, it was Snape who reported the first part of the prophecy to Voldemort, this resulted in me being orphaned, it is Voldemort who the goblins believe to be Snape's true master. Then when I said that I was going to kill the greasy git, Ragnok said that the potions master had violated several Goblin tenets and the goblins would be pleased to remove him . . . with extreme prejudice. Again, I do not know precisely what that means, but from the expression on Ragnok's face and what I have heard from other people, goblin justice is something to be avoided if at all possible; it serves the arrogant berk right.

"Anyway I am the Head of three Ancient and Noble Families which, apart from anything else, means that I reached my majority at the age of fourteen. Bumblemore the incompetent poof, as my pseudo wizarding guardian, should of told me that I was the Scion of the Potter family when I first arrived at Hogwarts. He didn't tell me because he would have also been telling me that I had loads of money and several houses so I didn't need to live with the Dursleys and I didn't need him as a wizarding guardian.

"Unless otherwise decreed in their parents will, by law advising me was a job for the Director of the Director of Magical Law Enforcement; this would of left him with very little control over anything I did. In the wizarding world not giving me this information is supposedly a five years in Azkaban offence but the goblins think that with the state of the Ministry he will wriggle out of it so they are going to handle it. As a precaution we have already arranged that when Dumbledore is incarcerated I will become your wizard world guardian, if you want."

She smiled brightly and wiggled in his lap.

"With due cause the goblins think and I agree, that if he gets dragged up in front of the Wizengamot he will come up with some greater good fairy tale and just walk away and then try to lock us down even tighter. So they will call Dumbledore and Snape into Gringotts at the same time; the pair will be tried before a goblin court and the wizarding world will likely never see either of them again.

"Oh and they know about Fawkes his phoenix, they believe that Dumbledore has put a binding charm on him; no creature of the light would voluntary stay with someone as dark as the Headmaster. It is possible for them to unobtrusively check Dumbledore for this and if it is there they can remove it; it will be another thing they will charge him with.

"As I said a lot of the things he will be charged with could be tried in a wizarding court but because he has committed offences against the goblin rules, they can try everything in their court and I can tell you that they are not at all happy with him. The goblins have their own truth serums and they totally circumvent human occlumency shields and force the subject to tell the whole truth; when they are finished with the pair, they will pass everything they find out, to Amelia Bones and the Quibbler.

"They expect at least Snape's testimony to include a list of death eaters and the Prophet would publish their fairytale version of the story but how closely it would resemble the truth is anybody's guess; as well as what they would leave out."

At this point both of them giggled because their tummies had rumbled in harmony so Harry called Dobby who laid out quite a feast for them on the coffee table; this semi upset Hermione because she had to get off of Harry's lap to eat it; however she did return when she had finished eating.

Harry continued his tale throughout dinner, "I met a goblin seer called Grindvaskar, she is also their leading expert on prophecies, she believes that my part in the prophecy we found in the Ministry was completed in Godric's Hollow that Halloween thirteen and a half years ago. Riddle was vanquished by me with some power none of us can more than guess at and the fact that he created Horcruxes to avoid his ultimate demise is totally irrelevant to the prophecy.

"Apparently the goblins are well aware of his Horcruxes, what and where they all are and how to destroy them; to be on the safe side they have placed a prohibition on the locations of all of the remaining ones whilst they go around and destroy them.

"There was one behind my scar which they have removed and destroyed, this laid me up for most of the week I was missing; now it is just him and his snake and there are goblins hunting both of them.

"Grindvaskar also said that it was obvious that Dumbledore was aware that Riddle had done something to enable his return but all that he had done about it was sit on his wrinkly old backside and wait. It somewhat surprised me but the goblins believe that Dumbledore's idea was for Riddle to kill me and then he would go and kill Tom in some perverted effort to become the great light hero again.

"A lot of this I find surprising, because as we have been repeatedly told, the goblins don't ever involve themselves with wizarding affairs. However they have gradually become completely disillusioned with the wizards handling of this whole situation so they are going to help me whilst they sort it all out.

"As Ragnok said, 'Death Eaters are bad for business'.

"At midnight tonight they are going to place severe access restrictions on the vaults of all known supporters of Tom Riddle; that is the known death eaters, suspect death eaters and his tacit supporters and this is not just in this country, goblins everywhere will be watching.

"Their evidence suggests that Voldemort currently only has a couple of thousand galleons and it takes a lot of money to perpetrate a war so the goblins are going to cut off Tom's supply.

"Then they are also going to tell him that the prophecy he seems so worried about has been fulfilled. So along with his minions he is to behave himself or they will impose further sanctions, their intention is to remove all of his minions from society, as soon as any of them enter any Gringotts bank they will be arrested, when any resist arrest they will be killed. The others will be tried by their court and those guilty of capital crimes will be executed, all of their assets will be sequestered and divided between their victims and the Ministry; this will be after the goblins have taken their handling fees. Of course wherever they can, they will extract as much information as possibly from everybody they get their hands on, it seems a bit arbitrary but as I was told by Ragnok, 'This is a war and it is about time somebody started treating it like one!' at least they are going to be.

"All of the death eaters, including Voldemort, who were at the ministry, fighting us have had all of their assets in the bank seized; ten percent they will keep, twenty five percent each for the Ministry and the DMLE. The remaining forty percent will be shared between us six and the Order of the Phoenix; they think that you will each get something like ten million galleons, that should shut Ron up until he dreams up some reason he should have had more.

"I was a bit worried until Ragnok told me that he already had appointments' with Fudge, Umbridge, Dumbledore and Snape; the first is at eight thirty this evening and they are in sequence; goblins don't sleep much.

"Having heard all of this you won't be surprised to learn that the goblins believe that, in the short term, this will cause a great deal of trouble and a lot of it might well be heading in our direction; so they suggest that we get out of the way.

"To that end they have used one of their time turners and bought, for me, a two hundred and thirty acre unplotable island in the Caribbean. I have retrospectively, I am not sure that that is the correct word, approved plans for them to build a twenty four bedroom house on it. The building itself is on four floors each of which is more than ten thousand square feet, all in all it looks pretty much like a hotel; the goblin codename for the project is Potters Paradise. I was wondering if your mum and dad would like to move there with us, there is plenty of room for them and others, if you wish. It is about a ten kilometre walk around the island's coastal path and the western side is a series of sandy coves, from their provisional pictures it looks great.

"As part of my inheritance I have acquired two libraries from the Black family, three from the Potter's and one from Gryffindor; the three families I am head of. Most of what the Headmaster calls his private library and the restricted section in Hogwarts library is now back under my control because I am the owner. The Headmaster, in his deluded arrogance, seems to have decided that certain information should only be available to him as he is the only one with the moral compass to use it properly. It has all been reclaimed and will be housed in the libraries in the new house, over half a million books slightly more than half of which are normal muggle publications both technical and fiction.

"Having cheered you up with that I should depress you again by telling you that all of the Weasleys school fees have been paid from my account. It started with Bill who began Hogwarts just after Ginny was born in the September after my parents were murdered. It was all set up by whiskers and the main problem is, we don't know why; currently they have had something like twenty three thousand Galleons. A lot of money for people I didn't even know . . . Dumbledore set it up so what are they being paid for . . . or to do? Do I really want to know?

"I'm currently worth something over two hundred million galleons so relatively the actual money is insignificant, ergo my thought is to just ignore it and as much as possible from now on ignore the Weasleys as well. I have stopped it being paid so Molly and Arthur will know this summer that I am at least aware of the money going out of my account . . . if nothing else.

"Unsurprisingly the goblins are determined to find out what the Weasleys were being paid for and they will act on the information as they believe necessary. Them having Dumbles in a chair and full of truth serum he will have to answer their questions; they think that I should know who we can trust, so they will tell me when it's all over. Currently the Weasleys only have two things that could raise enough to pay off the debt; I don't really want them to sell either the Burrow or Ginny; we will have to think about it.

"I have a three way reusable portkey that will carry us between the corridor outside this room, your home and the Bank. However before we think of using it there is one more major thing I must tell you. It is something which we should of been taught here in what is laughingly called History of Magic.

"The British wizarding world has laws stating that any bequeathed head to any Ancient and Noble family must have at least one child bearing wife for each inherited family, although he is allowed two if he wants them.

"It made me chuckle because this rule was introduced since so many of them were Gay that the families were disappearing, the last part is why so many betrothal and such like contracts have clauses demanding the production of heir's. The rules for Most Ancient and Most Noble families is at least two wives for each with a maximum of five; the family head is given three years to acquire the requisite minimum number of wives . . . the rules sound awful, it's no wonder so many pure bloods are such arrogant morons.

"These rules are not usually imposed, but the goblins believe that there are so many people trying to interfere with my life that people like Cyrus Parkinson, Pansy's father or for that matter Molly Weasley, would try to ensure that they were enforced. I and I should think that you would tend to agree with the goblins as well; some things would have to be started quite quickly or I could just dump the titles.

"My Potter title is inherited so it is not affected other than the first wife I take will become the Lady Potter.

"From the Gryffindor point of view dumping the title is not a problem, the family title would simply disappear until another worthy scion for the family comes along; however the Black family is somewhat different. Theoretically it should not be but with Malfoy's golden fertilizer Draco would most likely become the Black family head and the Black family's fortune totals some eighty million galleons . . . can you imagine the trouble Draco would cause with that behind him?" she shuddered.

"Us moving to the Caribbean wouldn't change much, wherever we live my first wife will be Lady Potter, the second Lady Black and the third Lady Gryffindor. If I don't have at least the intention of a child bearing Lady Black or Gryffindor then I would lose that title and its property, including the libraries, personally I don't give a monkey's about any of the titles."

For the first time Hermione interrupted him, "So to keep the Gryffindor library I would have to let you take a second and third wife?"

He was not best pleased and said, "I am not going to marry some girl for a few books no matter how old the books are; if you are not happy with the idea of me having multiple wives then it will not happen; whatever . . . in that context whosoever she or they would be will be mutually agreeable to both of us. It would be truer to say that I am being forced to take a second wife to keep Draco away from the Black family fortune. Also don't forget that we will be basically in hiding from the wizarding world so we will be isolated and as much as you like books they are not the whole reason for living . . . for either of us."

Hermione's face was about as red as it was possible for it to be; she had obviously been thinking of exactly what he thought she had just been thinking of . . . she had been totally busted.

He kissed her and then continued, "There is something called an open marriage contract, it has a fixed price of one hundred and fifty thousand galleons; at my discretion, a check is made to ensure that the girl is a virgin and then she is passed to the purchaser. Again this sounds almost obscene, however the girls can be asked in advance if this is something they would approve of and if not it wouldn't happen, contractually there is no obligation on my part to take any of them to bed or as wives'.

"The goblins had drawn up a list of all of the females in fourth and fifth year, a lot of them had been discarded because of their families obvious political leanings and outstanding betrothal contracts, one I discarded . . . before you ask, she was Millicent Bulstrode. There were eight left Susan Bones, Hannah Abbott, Luna, Daphne Greengrass, Tracey Davis, Padma, Parvati and you, it was suggested that Daphne Greengrass is very politically astute and should be considered as a potential Lady Black. I think that it is fairly obvious why Ginny is not on the list at this time.

"In the past I have been reliably informed that more than half of these girls like me, do you have a particular aversion to any of these girls?"

She thought for a few minutes and said, "I know all of them, more or less, I will be fairly surprised if Parvati can pass any virginity check, but as you said, it is not compulsory to have it checked; although there is quite a strong rumour that the Patil sisters only really like each other. Tracey and Daphne always seem nice but worried about what their housemates think . . . although with all of the death nibblers in their year I cannot say that I am very surprised about that; so no I do not have a particular objection to any of them."

He smiled, "So now we go to Gringotts."

**-x-**

The next day was Friday and at six in the evening they arrived at the Grangers home in Kent and Hermione was, to put it mildly, spitting nails.

She had seen some wonderful pictures and his new house was finished, it looked glorious . . . much like a five star hotel but casually elegant. The photographs taken around the island confirmed that it was beautiful; so much so that she wanted to lay on the beach and go for a swim in the turquoise water.

Then the goblins had determined that Harry and her were soul mates and because they had kissed they were now effectively married. Un surprisingly this had only pleased her, however she did think that her dad would have something to say about it; when she teased him about her dad Harry looked terrified.

However when the goblin healer had found and removed a binding on her magic and three memory charms, it was what the latter had revealed that really upset her.

It had only been the goblins assurance that the level of discomfort due to be experienced by Dumbledork and Snivellus van Greaselocks would be doubled that calmed her enough for her to carry on to her home.

"I cannot think straight enough to talk here Harry darling, could we please go somewhere more relaxing." She gazed at him with soulful eyes, she was obviously still very upset.

Dan and Emma her mother and father had been surprised at their daughters use of the word darling, however the precursor of the name Harry meant that this was Harry Potter, a name that was very familiar to both of them, ergo the darling wasn't all that startling.

"Shall we take them to my new house?" he asked.

"Mum, Dad go and quickly pack a bag for a weekend on the beach and it will be very warm and the sea looks wonderful."

Hermione had asked some strange things over the years this was a bit off the wall but it wasn't amongst the strangest, however after a week of halitosis and mouldy molars all in all a weekend on a warm beach sounded extremely inviting.

**-x-**

As it turned out Hermione's parents only stayed for the weekend, although they had their own private dental practice in Sevenoaks, they couldn't just up and leave it to run itself. Their clients had appointments and managed to get tooth ache; so they were going to return for a longer holiday later in the summer.

Over the course of the next week the other seven girls arrived with their parents; fortunately they didn't all arrive at the same time and there was always time for a couple of hours conversation with each of them. Generally it had all been very amicable and all of the girls were extremely friendly. The only family who didn't agree to the open marriage contract were the Patils; the twins father wouldn't agree to them being kept in limbo. Hermione was giggling because from the expression on the twins and their mother's faces' Mr Patil would be lucky to survive long enough to even reach limbo.

There had been some good news with regard to the Weasleys . . . they hadn't known that Harry was paying for their children's schooling . . . Dumbledore had told them that the money was coming from a trust fund. It was the truth, what he hadn't told them was that it was Harry Potters trust fund and not one he should of been using. The whiskered old fool, for some reason, wanted Harry to marry Ginny; he had obviously been demented for many years because even with the goblin truth serum none of his logic was making any sense. Although Harry decided to continue paying the school fees the goblins insisted that the Weasley family had to be informed of the situation because an honour debt was being accrued. This was all eventually sorted out when Ginny, much to her delight, joined her peers in the open marriage contract cohort.

Nobody seemed to be particularly surprised when it had only taken nine days for Voldemort to violate the terms of the goblin imposed sanctions on his behaviour. In an open letter to the Ministry of Magic, the Daily Prophet, the Quibbler and copied to the rest of the worlds press, the goblins declared open season on Voldemort and his minions.

The confrontation lasted less than two weeks before the Dark Lord, his death eaters and all of his unmarked followers were dead. If the follower had been the head of a family their scion's had been interrogated using truth serum and as necessary removed from circulation.

The expected eruption in the Wizengamot was almost a damp squib; Amelia Bones, the new Minister of Magic, presented the facts of the deceased members to the remaining members with all the press representatives in the chamber. There would be no ducking out of their responsibility; everything was going to be reported and she promised to close any publication that distorted the facts. This was one of the times when the people needed to know the unvarnished truth.

The Potters house in the Caribbean gradually became a school for Harry and the witches who were living there; eventually it expanded and also became an advanced school of magic offering masters courses as needed. Outside admissions to the school had nothing to do with money or family, they were solely based on character and ability, it was a school for light sided pupils.

As has previously been stated, Hermione was the Lady Potter and she eventually had three children, they were two boys and a girl (James, Dan and Lilly); all three were extremely clever and insanely brave; they obviously took after their parents.

Almost inevitably Daphne became the lady Black and she first had a girl, she then had a boy and there had been a slight altercation but inevitability Harry won and their first son was called Sirius. Harry had told her that if she had another son she could name him, within reason, whatever she wanted; she had another three daughters before she had another boy who she named Mathew Greengrass Black, after her father.

The British press namely the 'Witch Weekly' and the 'Teen Witch Weekly' were endlessly speculating as to who would become the Lady Gryffindor; if you had placed your money based on their predictions you would of lost it. Luna had gradually been getting better as the settled friends within the cohort slowly drew her out from her introspection; she was however the only one of them who could totally ignore the fuss around her. She became a brilliant mother to four girls and two boys Caradoc and Harri.

The other ladies of the cohort produced twenty children between them; all thirty five children seemed to have seven mothers who tried to keep them in order and a father who was as likely to lead them into mischief as anything else.

It might be a bit misleading to say that they were all home schooled being as how they were growing up in what had rapidly become the most advanced magical school in the world.

Although oft times they all visited Britain the family never felt the desire to return there to live; they had settled into the relaxed easy life of the Caribbean.

**Fin**

**Authors second Note:** I am well aware that Horcruxes were sprung on us in Harry's sixth year.


End file.
